Amid the Winter Snow

  “She’s kareshta.” Renata ran her hands along the hallway walls, her eyes wide and wondering.

  “What? How do you—?”

  “Look at the stone, Max. That child has magic, and it’s very, very powerful.”

  ~ 8 ~

  Max and Renata walked back to the house.

  “There’s climbing equipment in the storeroom, Renata said. “We’ll need it if we’re going back to the caverns.”

  “Are you sure about this?”

  “You felt her magic, Max.”

  “I know. I just… If she doesn’t want to be found—”

  “She needs to be found. It’s not safe.”

  Renata opened the door opposite the music room, and Max saw a collection of outdoor equipment. There were snowshoes and skis. Sleds and ropes.

  Renata walked straight to the wall of ropes. “Have you climbed before?”

  “Yes.”

  “Grab a harness and the basics. Most of the passageways are level and sloping, but there are a few drops and I don’t want us to get stuck. Some of the passages are narrow. You’ll have trouble getting through some areas with your shoulders.”

  Max had a dreadful feeling in the pit of his stomach. “Renata, are you sure this is a good idea?”

  “I don’t know if there are others with her, but if she’s run away, if there is a mother—”

  “If there is a mother, there could be an angel.” He gripped her shoulders. “Have you thought about that?”

  “What are our choices?” She shrugged off his hands and secured her harness before she gathered an armful of ropes. “If there is an angel, then we reassess. I don’t sense one. I saw one child, and she was tired and thin. There’s a storm out there. She needs our help.”

  Max didn’t try to argue any more. He grabbed the ropes and followed her back to the library. Wading into the twisting passageways had been difficult for Renata when she was steeped in memory. In the face of a rescue, however, she showed no hesitation. She walked to the left corridor and pulled back a tapestry hanging on one wall. There was a narrow passageway behind it and a gust of warm wind.

  “This is the only one we left open because it’s the main source of heat. This passage leads to the springs,” she said. “Can you make it?”

  “I’ll be fine. Lead the way.”

  She ducked under the archway and turned sideways. Max followed her, inching along until he felt the tunnel widen. As it widened, the warmth built and he could feel sweat running down his back. The air grew damper and warmer. Max truly understood why the original Irina built here.

  “How hot are the springs?”

  “I’ve never taken the temperature,” she said. “But I know some of the adults would come and bathe in one, so it can’t be too hot.”

  The tunnel widened into a small room of smooth limestone. Max, headlamp affixed to his forehead, scanned the walls. “This was a ritual room once.”

  “Probably. The library is far older than the house. In the beginning, they only lived in the caves. The houses came later.”

  Deep grooves were cut into the walls, the Old Language written in a script long out of fashion. He’d seen an old scribe once with script like this, but it had been in Syria decades before. They passed from the ritual room into another tunnel, that one just as steamy.

  “We’ll pass the first hot spring in the next room.”

  “Did you come here as a child?”

  Renata smiled over her shoulder. “It was strictly forbidden for children to play in the caverns. Of course I did.”

  He followed her though the tunnel and into the first spring room. It was completely dark, but his headlamp revealed niches along the wall for torches, and a cool gust of air told him there was ventilation built into the cavern. The pool was only a few meters across, and he could see the bottom. The water bubbled up from the shallow depths and ran out over a lip, splashing into the darkness beyond his sight and feeding one of the underground streams that echoed in the distance.

  “This is where they bathed,” Renata said. “There are vents carved above that keep the air fresh, but they don’t let too much of the weather in.”

  Max saw curls of vapor rising from the pool. “Are any of the gases dangerous?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  Max scanned the room, noting the flat walkway that surrounded the pool. It had to be partly natural and partly magic. There was no other explanation for the smooth benches and even walkways around a hot spring in a mountain cave. This had been a well-loved place and would have been popular for bathing in a time long before modern luxuries like heated baths.

  Touching his talesm prim, Max brought his magic to life. The darkness grew lighter, his hearing more sensitive. It was a blessing and a curse. Every small drop and drip echoed in the darkness. He could hear small animals—bats probably—flapping their wings. The key was to filter out the background noise and listen for anything out of place.

  He closed his eyes and listened for a few minutes, searching the darkness for human sounds.

  Gravel scattering across a floor.

  “Did you hear that?” he murmured.

  “No. Where?”

  There were two passageways branching off the spring room. Max pointed to the right one and Renata walked toward it. Just as he approached the tunnel, he paused, noticing something on the ground.

  “Renata.”

  She paused and turned around. Max pointed to the ground where the outline of a footprint was visible. It wasn’t just obviously human. It was obviously human and big. Adult sized. There was either a woman with very large feet traveling through the caverns, or there was a man.

  Renata nodded and Max saw a mask of grim determination slide over her face. She turned back to the passageway and walked into the darkness.

  The caverns behind Ciasa Fatima were a rabbit warren. They twisted and turned, branching multiple times. Passageways narrowed and widened. There were small rooms and low crawl spaces. If Renata hadn’t been leading, Max knew he would have gotten lost. He’d checked with her several times, but she said she was more than familiar with their surroundings and would have no problems finding their way back. Every now and then, she’d point out landmarks that barely seemed visible or notable to Max, but they meant something to her, and she kept walking.

  It was past the fourth pool that they found evidence of habitation in a wide hollow in the rock. It was a small room with smooth walls and a makeshift bed in the corner.

  Renata crouched down near the pallet and brought a corner up to her nose. “Grass. It smells like the meadow grass from the hills,” she said. “It’s not that old.”

  “So whoever is here has been here since before there was snow on the ground.”

  “Yes.”

  It was a large mattress, even if it was thin, and there was a stack of makeshift pillows and blankets at the foot. Another stack of books sat near the pallet, and Max could see the ground kicked up and scrapes on the stone floor.

  “I think whoever was here had more things,” he said. “More luggage.”

  “They’re running?”

  “That mattress is large enough for an adult and a child. Maybe two adults.” Max looked at Renata, waiting for her to meet his eyes. “Renata, there could be two of them.”

  The books were a collection of English, Italian, Turkish, and Arabic. Some were only pamphlets. Others were magazines. It was a scattered collection of writing that told Max whoever lived here had traveled from the east and collected things to read as they went. Refugees with a kareshta child?

  He looked around the room and noticed something in the corner. He crouched down and pointed his headlamp at the painting on the wall. In the darkness, he could see more work from a familiar artist.

  The child who had painted the animal pictures in the classroom had also worked on this wall. The crayons didn’t work as well on stone, but he could see light outlines of a flat-topped house and a group of trees and play equipment like he’d seen in human
parks. There were dogs and cats. A bed with a pink bedspread and dolls lined up beside it.

  “Renata, you need to come see this.”

  She was already back in the passageway. He could hear her footsteps growing fainter as she continued her search.

  In the far corner was one last picture, drawn in more detail than the others. A man and woman holding hands. On the man’s shoulders perched a little girl holding a purple balloon. The man had a beard and he was smiling. The woman wore a blue head scarf and she was smiling too. She was grasping the man’s hand, a spotted dog’s leash held in her other hand. Smiles. Ease. Peace. A pink bedroom and a park with swings. A beloved pet and a bright purple balloon.

  “They’re a family,” he whispered. What kind of family had a kareshta child?

  He looked again at the man and woman holding hands.

  A Grigori family, of course.

  Max heard Renata’s breath catch and echo a second before her feet started to move.

  She was running.

  Max stood. “Renata!”

  As soon as he entered the passageway, he smelled it. The scent of sandalwood was drifting in the air. Sandalwood meant Grigori.

  And Grigori meant Renata was on the hunt.

  He used his senses to track her, but it was difficult. Renata had been evading fallen angels, Grigori, and Irin scribes for centuries. She knew these tunnels like the back of her hand. She also had a knee-jerk reaction to Grigori. If she found the man in the pictures, she would stab first and ask questions later, possibly traumatizing the very child she was trying to help.

  He came to a halt when the passage dead-ended. Max turned and faced the darkness, knowing he had no hope of catching her before she found the man she was hunting.

  “Renata!”

  Max walked back down the tunnel, sweeping his headlamp back and forth, trying to hear anything familiar.

  “Renata, he is not your enemy.” Max couldn’t know that for sure, but he was hoping that a man who carried a little girl on his shoulders, bought her a purple balloon, and made her mother smile was not an enemy. Was the mother human or Grigori? The child had too much magic to be only a quarter angelic. “It’s a family, Renata. A man and a woman. A little girl.” He saw a dark tunnel entrance to the left that he’d missed the first time. he walked through it, hoping that this was the direction she’d gone.

  “They lived in a city, Reni. They had a little dog. They went to the park together. He carried her on his shoulders.”

  Max started running when he heard her. It wasn’t Renata, but it was a child. And that child was crying.

  He ran full speed down the passageway, using her cries to guide him. He turned right at a fork, hoping that the strange acoustics in the mountain weren’t playing tricks on his senses. When the crying grew louder, he ran faster.

  He almost missed them in his desperate search. He passed a long section of rock and heard the little girl’s breath catch. Backing up slowly, Max crouched down and looked into a crevice.

  His headlamp caught a flash of blue. He took off the bright light and shone it at the floor. The woman in the blue head scarf was hiding in the crevice, her amber-gold eyes wide and frightened, her hand pressed over the mouth of the little girl who squinted at the light. Taking a guess, he spoke in Arabic.

  “My name is Max.” He held out his hand. “I’m not here to hurt you. I promise.”

  Both the woman’s and the little girl’s eyes were bright gold. The woman, like the man, was angelic offspring. Was the child their own? The little girl didn’t look like the woman. They might have been sisters of the same angelic father, not mother and daughter. It wouldn’t be the first time siblings had protected younger children from the Fallen.

  “I don’t want to hurt you, but I’m afraid my friend thinks the man with you is dangerous.”

  The woman in the blue head scarf shook her head violently. No!

  The little girl pried the woman’s hand away from her mouth. “Mama?”

  The woman kept shaking her head. She curled into herself, trying to move farther away from Max.

  “He doesn’t have knives, Mama.”

  The woman shook her head again.

  “I promise you”—Max looked at the woman—“I promise you I mean you no harm. I know there are Grigori like you. I know you’re trying to live quietly. I saw your room. I saw your daughter’s paintings.”

  The woman stared at him but didn’t speak.

  “You live up here to get away from the voices, don’t you? So she won’t have them in her head.” He nodded at the little girl. “You’re a good mother.”

  Mother, mother, mother. This was a kareshta with a magical child. A kareshta in the company of a Grigori with a child pointed to one obvious conclusion. “You’re a family, aren’t you? The man, he’s your mate.”

  The woman frowned but still didn’t speak.

  “We like it here,” the little girl said. “I don’t hear anyone up here except Mama and Baba. And sometimes there are a few people in the summer. But they don’t bother me too much. They usually have happy thoughts because they’re on holiday.”

  “Is it better in the library?”

  “There’s magic there,” she whispered. “Do you feel it too? It feels so nice.”

  Max smiled. “I do.”

  “I like playing in the library.” She looked at her mother with guilty eyes. “I’m not supposed to, but I do.”

  Just like Renata, the little girl had ventured into the forbidden. “I often did things I wasn’t allowed to when I was your age.”

  “Did your mother get angry with you?”

  My mother is dead, he thought. Killed by brothers of the man who fathered you.

  It was all too twisted and heartbreaking to share. The child was an innocent. Looking at the woman, Max knew that she—unlike her daughter—knew the truth. Their races were at war, and if Max didn’t find Renata quickly, there might be another casualty that night.

  “I’ll find them,” he told the woman. “Which way did he go?”

  The woman pointed to the right.

  Max said, “Stay here. Stay hidden. I’ll come back for you.”

  Following the passageway as it sloped down, Max felt the air grow colder and drier. He was leaving the warmth of the hot springs and entering the heart of the mountain. Limestone glittered around him and stalactites glittered from the ceiling above. He paused where the passage branched and listened.

  There. Finally.

  There was muffled scuffling in the distance and labored breathing. Max ran in the direction of the fight, almost running over Renata as she charged the man holding a silver dagger, crouched across from her in fighting position. Blood marked his cheek and one eye was turning black. Renata’s shirt was torn and she was leaning heavily on her left knee.

  “Stop!”

  “He’s Grigori.”

  “He’s a father,” Max said, trying to move between Renata and the man she was fighting. “The child we saw? She’s his.”

  The Grigori swept a leg out and tried to trip Max.

  “I’m trying to help you!” Max shouted. “Both of you need to listen. Do you want your daughter to be an orphan?”

  “She’s better off an orphan than under the thumb of a monster like him!” Renata said.

  “Will you listen to yourself!” Max shouted, his arms up, still trying to defuse the two combatants. “Renata, this is a father protecting his mate and child. Would you kill him for protecting his child?”

  “She’s kareshta,” Renata said. “She’s not his.”

  “I’ve seen her. Seen the mother. Seen him. The girl looks exactly like him. Her mother may be kareshta, but that child isn’t kareshta. She’s a free Grigori child, born of free Grigori parents. They are not our enemy.”

  “I am free of my sire.” The man’s voice came out rough, speaking in heavily accented English. “Thawra is not free. That is part of why we are in hiding.”

  Max muttered, “Not helping.”

&
nbsp; Renata had lost the furious rage and looked more confused than murderous. “What are you talking about?”

  “I am free,” the Grigori said. He kept his knife up, but his posture relaxed incrementally. “My sire, Jaron, is dead. I was living in Damascus when I felt him die.”

  “But your mate,” Max said. “She is not free?”

  “No. I agreed to help her brothers for safety in their city. She’s the daughter of Melek. Many of her brothers have tried to kill their father, but they have failed.”

  “Melek’s children?” Max asked. “Born to a Yazidi mother then?”

  The man nodded. “Melek sells his daughters. He sends all of them away except for his guards. I took her away from the people who bought her. She was in a village, so I brought her to Damascus. She didn’t like the city, but she was coping. For some reason, the voices weren’t as bad when we were together.”

  Max felt ancient magic run along his skin when he realized what the man was saying. He looked at Renata and realized that she’d understood as well.

  “Because she’s your reshon,” Renata murmured. “Your touch will make the voices go away.” She looked stunned. Dazed. She looked between Max and the Grigori, then stepped back and lowered her knives. “Max?”

  He shook his head. “I know it seems improbable, but…”

  “Are you going to kill me?” the Grigori asked.

  Renata’s face was blank. “When was the last time you killed a human?”

  The man’s eyes filled with guilt. “Seventy years. When was the last time you killed a Grigori?”

  Renata sheathed her knives. “Ten days.”

  The man’s face went pale. “They need me. I know I’m a murderer, but please don’t take me away from them.”

  Max stepped between Renata and the Grigori. “We can talk about this.”

  Her eyes were blank and cold. Nevertheless, Max was hopeful. The knives were put away.

  Renata jerked her head toward the passageway. “Follow me.”

  “I can’t leave Thawra and Evin in the caves alone.”

  “We’ll pass them on the way back,” Max said. He grabbed Renata’s hand and knit their fingers together. “Are you ready?”